I might have forgotten something, but these are the major changes of the original firmware.

Most of our work has targeted a new open-source GPL rewrite of the software. We have rewritten the keypad driver and the FPGA driver. I have written many support utilities such as a FPGA debug utility, a NAND flash dumping utility, a NAND flash image editor and more.I have also written a Makefile to build SDL with PNG and TTF support and all their required dependencies, gnuddrescue and a userland framebuffer terminal.

What has to be done concurrently is resume work on pdmotiond which is a full open source GPL reimplementation of the entire CNC motion stack.This will also handle the limit switches, emergency stop, different axis configurations, FPGA setup (steps per mm, etc.) and homing / probing.

I am willing to kick in to help fund a replacement to further the development of this control.

Rob

This is a really kind offer I am trying everything to get the controller back to life, but if I fail, I would love to come back to your offer

EDIT:I have just registered us a domain:http://pandora-cnc.eu/ which will now serve as the download address (replacing data.bmuessig.eu) and will contain all information and the credits.The site will also have, being a .eu, free whois protection...

The basic idea is that I rewrote the driver to behave the same as the original one but with included sniffing/tracing code.The data can be accessed by an external tool also available in the repository (Use README for more info if interrested).Basically you unload the original stuff and insert this new one and launch the app.

Here are some filtered traces, if anyone is curious (filtered only LKT read/write events, don't know exactly what they are).

One more question,Is it possible to restore the factory windows op system?

I can't find it...

While there should be no reason to do so, yes you can.This is the factory firmware, do not download if you don't want to restore to factory and lose your config!Download stock/factory firmwareInstructions to flash it are as with my firmware.While this will install the original firmware, it will not remove additional files / hooks / etc. that have been put in place by my firmware.But again, if something doesn't work with my firmware, please report it or I can't fix it!

News to the new firmware!I have reverse-engineered the bootloader and written a program to generate complete NAND flash images that can be downloaded to the controller's NAND from within the controller's Linux. This means, we will soon get Ethernet and a fully custom boot splash .

I have just received the best email in a long time.Attached was a 4axis.bin which flashed to my controller just fine.IT IS ALIVE AGAIN!!!

I owe you so much, @iocapa.

Also thank you all so much, who would have donated to me, if the controller would've been totally dead.Without iocapa, it certainly would've.

I may need to clarify, that the controller is not yet fully working.What works again now is, that the same embedded Linux which is running on all your controllers, is now booting.Many files are still missing and it might take a lot more time to fix this, but I think we can mostly recover it.It will never be particularily good again, but hopefully good enough to be used for further development.

It seems like we were on a good path.But I can't tell if we can really get it back to factory firmware again.I have tried to contact the manufacturer about it, but after an initial response I have never heared back.Currently I am trying to get the flash dumped in a different way than what I have tried in the past.This one is booted instead of Linux and writes the huge image compressed over the RS232 port.If this attempt fails, I may have to resort back to the kind donation offers...

Anyways, unfortunately there has not yet been any progress recently that anyone except us developers can make use of.If anyone has ARM Keil, please PM me. I would need some code built.If not, I am working on a bare-metal toolchain for the controller so that we could run any operating system or bare-metal C code.The latter is what I need for the Flash copy utility.

EDIT: There has been one thing I got to work which will be useful for the others of you. There is now Lua support for the controller which will be included by default in further firmware releases and finally the full rewrite. Lua is a very nice and very easy to learn programming language which is in some aspects similar to Basic. We will allow users to write plugins in Lua to extend the new firmware's capabilities and add cycles and other customizations.

I am in the middle of switching from Mach 3 to this device and am missing something about the inch programming mode.

I have used Fusion 360 and Jay's post processor to generate the code below with a G20 for inch mode. it is the outside contour of a rectangle.The DDCSV1.1 display is not matching up with the program coordinates.

I have attached my setup vars for ref. ( Thanks to Benedikt for the configuration utility and firmware!)

Not sure why your machine is acting weird. I am going to spend some time reviewing the info you have supplied. Hopefully something will stick out.

I see you have a G64 in there. I have never thought to try that code on this control. I am amazed at the codes that this machine will process that are not documented in the manual. Maybe we should start compiling a list of usable codes.

Have you tried to run the code without the G64?

What does the machine motion look like when running the code? Is it moving anywhere near the dimensions you have programmed? Or more like the positions on the control in your picture?

Have you run any code in metric format to see if the problem is isolated to the G20?

Andy, I had some time before work this morning and ran your code on my machine. Just like in your example, the control shows some crazy numbers. I did not capture if the motions are are correct even if the control is not.

I took out the G64 and it appeared to run the same.

I took out the G20 and it ran fine in metric mode.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say to forget about getting the control to run in inch mode via the G20.

That being said, I saw on another forum where a person fooled the control into thinking it was in inch mode by multiplying his pulses/per mm by 25.4. This means the control will put out 25.4 times the number of pulses necessary...which will in effect make the machine make movements in the inch realm. The down side is that the machine is now only able to accept 3 decimal place inputs (.001). For this to work correctly I would guess the post processor would need to be adjust to output 3 decimal places to ensure the rounding happens outside of the control. Not sure if that is a requirement, but I know it will work correctly.

The G64. I am torn by that command. I have not used it much in my 30 year programming career, but that does not mean anything tangible. I might be missing out on something great. I am going to review my FANUC manuals at work today and see how to correctly use it and test it at home on this control. I'm fairly certain one would not see any measurable effect on a home built machine unless they are machining at very high feed rates and trying to hold a corner definition. I'm very realistic with my application and I can say without a shadow of a doubt my machine is the weak link in holding tight corners at high speed.

The Chinese as well as most of Europe prefers millimeters. I doubt the Chinese who initially developed the firmware really cared about inch support.Eventually, I may officially add inches to the new firmware.

EDIT: In the documentation, the arrows are broken. You'll need to use the sidebar until this is resolved.Also, the documentation is very short. If anyone would like to write a few pages (especially on general usage), that would be great.

The Chinese as well as most of Europe prefers millimeters. I doubt the Chinese who initially developed the firmware really cared about inch support.Eventually, I may officially add inches to the new firmware.

EDIT: In the documentation, the arrows are broken. You'll need to use the sidebar until this is resolved.Also, the documentation is very short. If anyone would like to write a few pages (especially on general usage), that would be great.

BR,Benedikt

I want to make the interface translation into Russian. Found in the firmware two files in /upgrade/nand - CHS and ENGYou can add a third file RUS in the utf-8?

The Chinese as well as most of Europe prefers millimeters. I doubt the Chinese who initially developed the firmware really cared about inch support.Eventually, I may officially add inches to the new firmware.

EDIT: In the documentation, the arrows are broken. You'll need to use the sidebar until this is resolved.Also, the documentation is very short. If anyone would like to write a few pages (especially on general usage), that would be great.

BR,Benedikt

I want to make the interface translation into Russian. Found in the firmware two files in /upgrade/nand - CHS and ENGYou can add a third file RUS in the utf-8?

Unfortunately I do not speak any Russian. But since you do so, if you translate the English text that I can send you via email to Russian, I will make Russian a language option with the next firmware release and also add it to the configurator as a language option.I will add a German file too. If someone would also translate the text into French or Italian or any other language, I will surely also include these languages. There is a bit of code to add and a lot of patching to do. But I guess I can make it work for you ;)